Red Army Faction plotted to kidnap designer Karl Lagerfeld

German terrorists once planned to kidnap fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld as part of a scheme to free fellow guerrillas from jail.

A former member of the Red Army Faction, also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang, which terrorised Germany throughout the 1970s and 80s with murders, kidnappings and bank robberies, said Lagerfeld was viewed as a perfect target because of his personal wealth.

Convicted terrorist Peter-Jürgen Boock, who is out of prison having served 17 years, said the designer was the most prominent of "an array of people with a large fortune on whom we collected information with a view to kidnapping them".

"Karl Lagerfeld was on our list, [along with] an underwear manufacturer and a few Frankfurt bankers," said Mr Boock, a former member of the RAF unit called the Siegfried Hausner Kommando, who was involved in the September 1977 kidnapping and murder of former employers' representative Hanns-Martin Schleyer.

In the early autumn of 1977, the group plotted to kidnap Lagerfeld and secure a ransom, which it wanted to use to rent flats and obtain cars and weapons to free gang members Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe, who were standing trial, from jail.

Before he rose to prominence in the fashion world, Lagerfeld, who was born in Hamburg, had amassed a small personal fortune. In the 1970s, when he became a potential RAF target, he was the artistic director of the French fashion house Chloé, where he developed perfumes.

He was seen as an ideal victim not only because the RAF needed money but also because he was a symbol of capitalism, which the group despised.

The plan was eventually dropped in favour of kidnapping Schleyer.

Earlier that year, the group had kidnapped and killed Siegfried Buback, the state prosecutor, in revenge for the imprisonment of the RAF members. The issue of who should be held responsible for his death is a point of intense discussion.

In contrast to the RAF's policy of collective responsibility, which prevents members revealing who pulled the trigger in murder cases, Mr Boock has admitted he recently told Buback's son, Michael, that Christian Klar, who is serving nine life sentences, in part for the murder, was not responsible for it. Klar has appealed to the German president for early release and the justice minister, Brigitte Zypries, says she wants to re-examine his claim.

The revelations about Lagerfeld have shocked Germans, for whom he represents the cream of German fashion design on the international stage. They come on the 30th anniversary of the so-called German Autumn of 1977, when the country was gripped by far-left terrorism.

Lagerfeld, 68, who lives in Paris and has had his own fashion label since 1984, could not be reached for comment yesterday.